Youth
When your heart leaves mine it will be an old woman
With two of my shrunken flowers for her breasts.
XIX
Your breast is the bridal-couch of our stillness.
The restless beggar of our breath
Leaves the folding of stillness, reeling with gifts,
With dreams in which we glimpse our own scars.
We give these reflections of scars to stillness
And she turns them into bitter hummingbirds
Offering us the colored death of song
Held out in her enticing hands.
XX
Like prayers born dead, long shadows
Strew the floor and clutch at your feet,
But buoyant with paint you walk to and fro.
The room is garlanded with unseen eyes
That you must evade lest they touch you into sight
And send you, naked, into the moonlight.
XXI
Your body is a closed fan
Holding long brush-strokes of glowing repose.
Your words clumsily unloosen the fan
And it dips to the rustling birth of forgotten doubts.
Your soul bears the fan lightly in his hand
And waves to the mirror his blind eyes cannot touch.
XXII
The gown you wear is curiously like sound—
Tangles of dahlia-murmurs taking shape
In shrinking, mellow sprays.
The everlasting journey of your heart
Gliding over a sleepy litany
That winds through scattered star-flowers of regrets:
The everlasting journey of your heart
Is like a fragile traveler of sound—
A murmur seeking the love that gave it birth.